washington -- At the Group of 8 summit of world leaders in June, President Bush repeated his calls for developing nations to curb their emissions of greenhouse gases. Without their cooperation, he said, drastic measures in the United States to battle climate change would make little sense. "We all can make major strides, and yet there won't be a reduction until China and India are participants," he told reporters. But just weeks earlier, the U.S.

Ventura County government's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, cut down on waste and save energy are commendable but more needs to be done, the Board of Supervisors said Tuesday. Everything from installing solar panels on administrative buildings to changing how supervisors quench their thirst during meetings should be considered, county leaders said. "We have to do something about these bottles," Supervisor Steve Bennett said, lifting his plastic water bottle from the dais.

Pacific Gas & Electric, California's largest utility, said it wanted to purchase credits from projects that would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to fight global warming. The San Francisco-based utility is searching for projects in the livestock manure management sector that will offset the equivalent of 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide, it said. It will also include other types of investments for forestry management.

Biofuels like ethanol can help reduce global warming and create jobs for the rural poor, but the benefits may be undone by serious environmental problems and higher food prices, the U.N. has concluded in its first major report on bioenergy. The report raised alarms about the potential negative effect of biofuels, just days after a climate conference in Bangkok said the world had the money and technology to stabilize global warming.

General Motors Corp. said it would be the first automaker to join a coalition of environmental groups and large businesses in pressing the U.S. government to pass mandatory caps on emissions of gases linked to global warming. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, formed this year, seeks economywide greenhouse gas emission reductions of 60% to 80% by 2050.

Stepping into the rancorous national debate over global warming, the U.S. intelligence community has launched an examination of the security threats that could be triggered by rising temperatures, officials said Thursday. The review was announced by the nation's intelligence director as congressional Democrats and Republicans sparred over whether it was appropriate for the beleaguered U.S. spy services to spend resources studying threats posed by the environment.

China, on pace to become the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, has emerged as the major stumbling block in approving a United Nations report on how to stabilize global warming and generate the trillions of dollars needed for the endeavor. The report, to be released Friday in Bangkok, Thailand, is the third of four installments being issued this year by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Arctic sea ice is melting three times faster than many scientists had projected, U.S. researchers reported just days ahead of the next major international report on climate change. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado in Boulder on Monday said they had concluded, using actual measurements, that Arctic sea ice had declined at an average rate of about 7.8% per decade between 1953 and 2006.

Al Gore said Canada's new plan to reduce greenhouse gases was "a complete and total fraud." Gore said the plan, announced Thursday, did not specify how Canada would achieve a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. He said it also allows industries that are increasing production to pollute more if they use emissions-cutting technologies.

Premier Wen Jiabao pledged Friday to help clean China's air and water and combat global warming by phasing out tax breaks and discounts on land and electricity for highly polluting industries. "More work on energy conservation and emissions reduction is urgently required to deal with global climate change," Wen said. "Our country is a major coal producer and consumer, and reducing polluting emissions is a responsibility we should bear."